Neil Young Chrome Dreams and 1989-91 Represses

[@briangonigal3974]

You’ve mentioned feeling that Freedom has somehow been “overshadowed” by Ragged Glory before in your ranking of Young’s albums and I’m sorry, I just don’t feel that that’s ever been the case at all. Freedom was his huge surprise comeback album, featuring the massive Rock radio hit “Rockin’ In The Free World” and a wide variety of other really high- quality material. Ragged Glory has always been seen as the Freedom follow-up much more narrowly focused to appeal to the Grunge audience, but more importantly it’s basically a Jam Band album, and such an album is just never going to have as wide appeal as a more varied album like Freedom. I’ve always loved Weld since the day it came out. I only ever saw Neil You g live once, but it happened to be at one of the shows at Madison Square Garden during the Ragged Glory tour that they picked for a couple of tracks on Weld. I distinctly remember thinking that the actual performance of “Tonight’s the Night” I heard live was longer & even better than the edited version of that same performance that’s on Weld. No, I have no idea how I could have even pretended to have had such an accurate memory over a year later when I first heard the Weld album, …Except, I may have actually been going by a concert video version of Weld that was also released at the time on VHS. I think it replicated the track listing of the Weld album and likely used all the same performances, but with more time available on a VHS tape it might have included longer, unedited versions of a couple of those performances. In any event, a newly remastered blu-ray of that concert film would certainly be a nice little bonus in a deluxe version of a standalone Weld CD reissue. I’m pretty sure I still have that Weld VHS tape somewhere, but of course I no longer have anything to play it on.)

[@lostmixtapes]

I’m looking at Ragged Glory and Freedom through my lens of experiencing them both as new albums when I got into him. Weld was probably out too at the time. Only 2 songs from Freedom were on Weld. But I can totally see how Freedom could have been a much bigger deal that those who were fans of his already at the time of its release. Now in 2023 I think Freedom tends to get overlooked and Ragged Glory gets most of the attention. Cool story about seeing Neil on that tour and the partial recording of Weld. I need to seek out the video version.

[@aronpolasek4506]

Great timing for this video as I've recently been doing a deep dive of the 3 shelved/abandoned record projects that Neil had in the mid 70s. The overlap of material can make things a bit confusing and somewhat frustrating, but there is so much great material spread across "Homegrown", "Hitchhiker", and "Chrome Dreams". Of the three albums, I enjoy "Chrome Dreams" the most, but I actually enjoy the sparse, druggy haze feel of "Hitchhiker" quite a bit. "Homegrown" is half brilliant material, and the rest is somewhat forgettable for me if I'm being honest. My only real criticism of "Chrome Dreams" is that, while I love 'Like A Hurricane', it sort of sticks out quite a bit in this collection. It is just such a blistering rock song, that it briefly throws everything off for me just by its presence. I have the vinyl versions of these albums, except for "Homegrown", but I also picked up the CD versions as well. From those, I compiled the playlist below and called it "Neil Young - Lost In The Mid 70s". It isn't in strict chronological order by recording date from start to finish, but I did go in order of "Homegrown" to "Hitchhiker" to "Chrome Dreams". I cut out the song duplication, and moved a few songs around within their individual album sections to help improve the flow. Tough call on where to put 'Star of Bethlehem' since it appears on both "Homegrown" and "Chrome Dreams". I opted to keep it with "Homegrown" since it had the earliest recorded date on "Chrome Dreams". Seemed like it belonged more to "Homegrown". What was strange was deciding to go with the version of 'Homegrown' on "Chrome Dreams" over the version found on...(checks notes)..."Homegrown". The version on "Chrome Dreams" has that Crazy Horse charm, that my ears preferred. This made for a nice listen to start my work day earlier this morning. 1. Love Is A Rose ("Homegrown") 2. Separate Ways ("Homegrown") 3. Vacancy ("Homegrown") 4. White Line ("Homegrown") 5. Star of Bethlehem ("Homegrown") 6. Give Me Strength ("Hitchhiker") 7. Ride My Llama ("Hitchhiker") 8. Hitchhiker ("Hitchhiker") 9. Campaigner ("Hitchhiker") 10. Human Highway ("Hitchhiker") 11. The Old Country Waltz ("Hitchhiker") 12. Pocahontas ("Chrome Dreams") 13. Look Out For My Love ("Chrome Dreams") 14. Like A Hurricane ("Chrome Dreams") 15. Captain Kennedy ("Chrome Dreams") 16. Hold Back The Tears ("Chrome Dreams") 17. Homegrown ("Chrome Dreams") 18. Stringman ("Chrome Dreams") 19. Sedan Delivery ("Chrome Dreams") 20. Powderfinger ("Chrome Dreams") 21. Too Far Gone ("Chrome Dreams")

[@lostmixtapes]

I agree about Like A Hurricane jumping out. That sequence could be better. Like adding it after the song Homegrown. Impressive playlist! Have you thought about adding the Zuma songs in there? Would fit in chronologically.